


voicemail

by windwhisper



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Not Canon Compliant, Past Character Death, So here we are, and then i wanted to share it with the world, but i felt like i needed to write it, this is just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 10:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18798826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windwhisper/pseuds/windwhisper
Summary: Even months after the Shadow War has ended, Webby still can't seem to move on. Finding Lena's number still registered in her phone, she takes to leaving voicemail messages.





	voicemail

Webby's fingers trace over the screen, only hesitating and hovering over the ominous 'delete’ button. If she presses it, it will be over. Like she was never there at all, like the texts and late-night phone calls never happened. The physical evidence would disappear. But she would still remember. How could she  ever forget? Lena was just so… Unforgettable.  
  
_Lena is gone._  
  
It keeps striking her unexpected, the realization that she's gone and not coming back. Just when she manages to forget, because remembering hurts so much, that's when she reaches for her phone and suddenly remembers. She'll spend too long reading over text messages that don't mean anything, really, but they mean everything to her. They're proof that Lena was there, at one point. And, at least as far as Webby is concerned, proof that she was really her friend.  
  
After all, Lena had sent her pictures of strangely shaped rocks and possibly-poisonous flowers and cats she met on the street (she even gave them nicknames). But that's not what she spends so long staring at, most of the time: her attention is directed at the texts themselves, at Lena's distinct writing style and the things she has to say. There's no punctuation, pretty much ever, and almost no capital letters. She can almost hear the texts in Lena's voice.  
  
It hurts so much to remember that she will never hear her voice again.  
  
So her hand hovers over the 'delete’ button, as she contemplates. She can't keep being sad, but how can she be happy with so many things still left unsaid?  
  
Her finger slips, and she hits the 'call’ button by accident. It rings and rings and rings, and just as she's wondering if it  will simply ring forever, just as she’s forcing herself to reach for the ‘cancel’ button, an automated voice tells her she has reached voicemail.  
  
Lena's voicemail message is simple and familiar, and just hearing her voice again on top of everything else is almost enough to make Webby cry. She has so much she wants to say, so many things Lena will never hear.  
  
She doesn't know why, exactly, but she starts talking, and once she starts she doesn’t know how to stop.  
  
_“Hey, Lena. I miss you. ...It's complicated, right? You betrayed us, kind of, but you were still… You still are my best friend.”_ Really, even now, her only friend: the triplets are her family more than anything else, and she's grateful for them, of course she is, but she misses her friend, too. _“Um… The city's mostly back to normal by now. Things at the mansion are kind of normal, too, except… Different, I guess. I think the hardest thing to get used to is that you're not here anymore. I guess that's why I'm talking to you now. It's like you're just… A phone call away.”_  
  
She rambles for a while longer, until she learns there is apparently a limit for how long a message can be and she's cut off mid-sentence. But she feels a little bit better now.

~

It happens again, and again and again, until it's a kind of routine. She'll call Lena's number, listen to her voicemail, and leave a message describing anything major that happened recently. And sometimes she'll just remember something she never got to say, so she'll call and say it.  
  
_“Hey, Lena. I just wanted to say… I'm sorry I read your diary. I invaded your privacy, even if it was because I thought you might have been kidnapped and left a note or something.”_ Maybe that wasn't the only reason, exactly (she had read the poem that wasn't exactly a ransom note, after all), but the other reason wasn't something she was ready to talk about yet. _“And, I… I'm sorry I ever doubted you. You always came through, Lena. In the end, you weren't a traitor at all. You'll always be my best friend. I promise. I'll remember you, and everything you did for me. I just wish you were still here.”_

~

She salvages what she can of Lena's amphitheatre space, and burns the rest. The books are all intact, thankfully (she can feel chills at the thought of Huey's reaction to her potentially destroying precious knowledge, not to mention that some of them might be magic or even cursed), and the lava lamp.  
  
It takes a few days and a lot of rearranging, considering she’s kind of doing it in secret (it isn't that she wouldn't have been allowed, exactly, but everyone else seems to think she's managed to move on and she doesn't want to disappoint them), but eventually it’s done. She's rearranged her room in a way that is still very much hers, but with pieces of Lena scattered throughout. Memories she doesn't want to lose.  
  
_“Hey, Lena… I went to visit your old place the other day. I saved what I could, but most of it's gone now.”_ She leaves out the part where she burned it to a crisp, though. _“Your books are all fine, though. The lava lamp, too.”_ There are a lot of things she could say, a lot of things she could ask. But she'll never get an answer or even a response, she knows that. _“I’m sorry, Lena. We should've known. Maybe, if we had… Things could have been better.”_ She doesn't waste time wondering if it was ever possible: she wants to dream, right now, that it was. Maybe in some other parallel universe she's not leaving messages for someone who will never answer. Maybe, just maybe, they got to have a happy ending.

~

In the ending she gets, though, she leaves one last message. It's a chance for her to finally say everything she couldn’t before. It’s not a lot, not anymore, when most of it has already been said in her other messages, but she still feels like there’s at least one more thing that needs to be said.  
  
_“Hey, Lena? I love you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this fic, and if you didn't that you at least got something out of the experience.
> 
> Before I get into anything else, I want to thank the people I asked to look this over for me while I was writing it. It took a long time, but especially toward the end, Zinnc and Team_Cap were super helpful in motivating me to finish it (and helping me figure out how I wanted it to end).
> 
> I'm not 100% sure I like the dialogue formatting I went with, but I decided to commit to it. The italics are supposed to symbolize the voicemail messages, but I don't know if that makes as much sense as I think it does.
> 
> On to the actual notes, though... This isn't my usual style at all. I don't like doing things without happy endings, usually, but this felt like an exception. It occurred to me one afternoon, months ago, listening to Apes of the State's 'Erase Your Number' (you should give it a listen if you haven't, especially in the context of this fic!). I'm pretty sure this wasn't the context it was meant for, but this was the idea that popped into my head that day, and I'm happy to have finally seen it through. For a long time I wanted to give this a happy ending, but I ended up deciding against it when the time came to actually write it. If you read this fic (and this note!), thank you, seriously! It means a lot! (I mostly write for myself, but that doesn't mean I don't want other people to enjoy the things I write too.)
> 
> Mostly, I'm just glad I finished it before 208 airs and makes everything I've written completely noncanon.


End file.
